Academics

Courses: American Intellectual History (HISTH255A01)

A two-semester course which reconstructs our national historical ""project[s],"" from the landing of the first Africans at Jamestown in 1619 and the founding of Plymouth Plantation in 1620 to the present. Our Ariadne's thread will be the persisting problems of race, class, and regional differences for a would-be republican commonwealth. Reading widely in the sources, we will relate the architecture of public discourse in America - its rhetorical scaffolding, its recurrent themes, and its alternative blueprints for a well-ordered society - to the perceived constraints of a changing political economy. This course may be divided, with the instructor s consent. The first semester will cover the years 1620 to the Civil war.